


Holding the Strings

by zabira



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003) RPF, Canadian Actor RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-06
Updated: 2008-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:05:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zabira/pseuds/zabira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I guess you could call this an ep tag for the <i>Maelstrom</i> <a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riRdmER_biw">deleted scene</a>.  It is for <a href="http://meresy.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://meresy.livejournal.com/"><b>meresy</b></a>, who has kindly offered to take all responsibility.</p><p>No disrespect intended to any of the persons depicted herein. This is purely fictional, and not in any way intended as an accurate representation of reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding the Strings

**Author's Note:**

> Much gratitude to [](http://crickets.livejournal.com/profile)[**crickets**](http://crickets.livejournal.com/) for beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine, all mine! As always, any comments or critiques are welcome.

It started out as a little thing. He's a good-looking guy, and he's focused on her for hours at a time. She's bound to feel something about that. Now, though? It's gotten out of hand.

She's supposed to be a professional. The way doctors aren't supposed to get emotionally involved with their patients? That should be the way this goes: she shows up, they say their lines, the camera clicks and whirs, and they go home. Yeah, that's the way it's supposed to go.

The problem is that they work so well together. They're so lit up around each other that everything gets magnified, blown out of proportion.

She's had her _moments_ with other actors. When things are going well, when you're pinging off one another, flipping words and looks back and forth so fast and smooth, it's like the best game there is. And those lines can blur, you can forget for a few minutes or hours that it _is_ just a game, just a job. She's gotten caught up in it before, a time or two.

That was nothing like this. Callum focuses on her with almost frightening intensity; those laser eyes boring in to her, just as is called for in the script. Yet it isn't entirely about the script. He is with her, locked in to her with complete commitment. When they are in scenes together, she feels absurdly as if she's a marionette, and he's holding her strings, as if she will crumple right to the ground like a doll if he so much as looks away from her. But the killer, the thing that makes this particular game feel so dangerous and exciting, feel as if they are free-falling together? Is that she can _see_ , she can _feel_ that she's doing the same for him.

They are in this together, and it's been that way since the very first day.

At first, it just gave them a little edge—she was still churning out her Starbuck-attitude and he was spouting about streams and destiny in that razor-edged purr of his—but they were always that tiny bit more _on_ when they were together.

She was always glad to see him, but now her heart starts beating so fast when he walks into a room that it feels like there's a bird in there, struggling to get free. She can't keep herself from watching him, and the way their job is, she doesn't even have to pretend she isn't. Their scenes together are getting ever more intimate, just the two of them, in a room—if you forget about the cameras and the crew. And she's supposed to stare. She clocks him as if he's a poisonous snake about to strike, or at least, that's what Starbuck should be doing. Whether her real fascination shows on her face, she can't tell, even after watching the dailies.

She knows he knows anyway. He's been in this business a long time. He can probably detect a crush from fifty paces, and they are hardly ever that far away from one another. She imagines he can hear the pounding of her heart when he leans in to whisper his lines in her ear.

Between takes, he's a goof, joking around with her, chivying her out of her seriousness. She's not sure if he's trying to defuse the tension—the little charge that seems to hover between them—or encourage it. Watching him carefully, she thinks maybe he isn't sure which one he's trying to do either. Anyway, him turning that smile on full blast, creating little jokes just for the two of them? That isn't going to defuse a damn thing, and he knows it. Still, the teasing keeps it all on the bleeding edge of innocent, and over time, she's learned to just be okay with her schoolgirl crush. It's kind of fun: the little zing she gets every time she sees his name on the call sheet, the exhilaration of working a scene with him. No harm done.

At least, that's what she thinks until she sees the shooting script for their next episode. There's no lead-up. It's right there on the first pages, blocked out for the camera, down to where she's supposed to put her hands. All over him.

It is only then that she remembers the real danger of harmless flirting: it charges the air between two people, it tunes them into one another so intensely that even little movements are broadcast in high definition. This little game of theirs has been going on for a good long while, and she is keyed so tightly into him, that she swears she can feel it if he even glances at her. They don't touch each other very often, unless it's called for by the script. Knowing all about how he smells—smoky, yet clean—and that he kisses with the same intensity and commitment he does everything else, is already too much information for her. This? She doesn't even know how to deal with it.

When it comes time to rehearse, she can tell he doesn't either. He's wary, apprehensive—which he's never been before—and doesn't quite meet her eyes as they block it out. She knows those eyes will be right on her when they need to be. He's a professional. He won't skimp an inch once the cameras are rolling. He's never cared about dignity or fear before, and he certainly won't now. That's _just_ what she's afraid of. Right now, they're simply practicing the motion—no paint, no cameras, in their street clothes—and he's nattering away at the DP, "Like this? And then turn left? My hand goes where?" as they turn and fall, turn and fall, grapple, turn and fall. She's almost okay with it, as long as his attention is safely elsewhere, but she knows it's going to feel worlds different when he grasps hold of that _thing_ between them, and starts to really play.

All too soon, that moment comes. She watches him assemble the character in his head: his normal fidgety, charming awkwardness overlaid with Leoben's almost frightening calm. She's seen this before, and it's always amused her, but today, it just makes her nervous.

Normally, she has trouble staying in character with the bustle of the set going on around her, but right now she's thankful for the distractions. She doesn't want to flub the scene, but she doesn't think she can take their usual high-wire act, not with him right there, in her face, in her mouth, in her hands.

At first, it's fine. She's just playing with paint, all by herself. She's supposed to be acting a little manic anyway, but in her head she reassures herself that really, it's nothing. It's just more acting business, and no big deal. _No big deal,_ she says to herself as she hears his footsteps stalking behind her. _Nothing's happening._ They've practiced this dozens of times already today, so it shouldn't startle her, but her heart starts to race when his hands close on her, and the bottom drops out of her stomach when he presses his nose behind her ear and whispers his first line. _Holy fuck._ She's in trouble. They haven't even started yet, and she's already falling apart.

She struggles to focus on the job, to keep it impersonal, but every time they begin again, something new hits her, jolts through her body as if it were really happening. His hands around her wrists. Cut! His shoulders flexing under her fingers. Cut! His voice, getting hoarser every minute. Cut! His breath on her neck as he whispers. Cut! The persistent idea that he's not entirely immune just makes it seem less like an illusion.

As the day wears on, his customary teasing becomes almost manic and ever more outrageous. If she had to classify the look on his face, she would say that he looks like someone who thought he was playing with a toy, and has found—to his chagrin—that he's got a bomb in his hand instead. As they grapple against the wall, again and again, she can feel him rubbing hard up against her hip. There's nothing he can do to hide it, and she thinks the only reason he isn't mortified by it is that she is clearly struggling not to just grind herself down on him until they both come.

It's ridiculous. She's done love scenes for the camera before, and they are never anything but awkward. The idea that she would get hot under the collar about kissing someone under klieg lights, with cameras whirring away in her ear, would have made her laugh before today, but when his tongue flickers over her palate—again, oh, again and then again—he might as well be licking her clit. She doesn't even have to pretend to strain towards him. The line between her and the act is blurring more and more with each take.

When the director yells "cut" for the final time, she gets up gingerly from the floor, letting him help her, and scratching absently at the paint that covers her in all kinds of unfortunate places. She's still thrumming, like a guitar string that's been plucked and not silenced. Her body is shaking with adrenaline and breathlessness and heat, but she calmly buttons up her shirt—only glancing at him briefly, with as natural a smile as she can muster—and heads back to her dressing room.

She doesn't notice him following her until she nearly closes the door on him. He pushes through it, and closes it behind him. They stare at one another for the briefest of moments. There is a question in his face, but it's one for which she can tell he already knows the answer. She's glad he doesn't seem to need her to say anything, because her breath started to go haywire again the moment he shut the door. She doesn't even bother with the pretense that she's going to deny him. She gives him the tiniest of nods, and he stalks over the space between them, grabs her forearms and presses their mouths together. It's not really a proper kiss. They're both already breathless, keyed up, too far gone for grace. They gasp into each other's mouths for a moment, teeth clicking and tongues tangling.

Then it is just as they'd choreographed it, smooth from countless practice runs: they turn—her arms grasped by his strong hands—and tumble down. Only he isn't stopping this time. When she reaches for his belt buckle, he doesn't push her away. Instead he hides his face in her neck, panting, while she fumbles with his buttons. Their hands get tangled up as he tries to help her with the black pants that were the director's useless concession to her modesty. It's momentarily awkward. She tunes in to the fact that his husky voice is muttering something by her ear: not "don't fight it" but "sorry" over and over again. "Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry," but his hands clutch at her, and she can feel his thigh-muscles flexing as he pushes himself almost mindlessly toward her seeking fingers. She's got his pants pushed down just far enough, and his cock in her hand—a silky-hot handful, already slick with pre-come.

He stills for a second, as if afraid to startle her, but she doesn't even hesitate. She hitches up her hips, scraping her thigh on his belt buckle, and guides him to her. At the first stretch of his cock inside her, just on the good side of too much, she makes a helpless little grunt of satisfaction.

He lifts his head to stare at her, his face clearly telegraphing _holy shit_. Then he curls his hands greedily around her shoulders, and _shoves_ into her. And just like that they are fucking. Quickly, roughly and with no finesse, grabbing and pushing to get closer. He's almost hurting her in his urgency, but it doesn't matter. She's been hovering on the edge for so long that everything feels fantastic. It isn't going to take much.

He reaches his hand between them to touch her, to help her along, and that's it, she's done, convulsing in waves of shivers that move outward from where his fingertip rests on her clit. She can't seem to stop coming, all her muscles fluttering and clenching to pull him closer, and he makes a hoarse, awkward sound and follows her down.

The whole thing can't have taken more than five minutes.

Afterwards, they lie clasped together for long moments. He's got his face tucked in her neck again, but he's not whispering anything, just gasping and trying to slow his breathing. When he finally lifts his head, she can see him getting ready to say something, and she raises her hand and rests a fingertip against his lips. _Let's not make a thing out of this,_ she lets her eyes tell him. He closes his mouth, nods and gets to his feet, helping her up off the floor for the twentieth time today.

They're silent as he puts himself back together, buckling and buttoning, fussing with his hair, but when he turns to go, she reaches up and kisses him on the cheek, as if to say, _No harm done._ He smiles a little ruefully at her, then walks out and shuts the door behind him. The minute she hears the latch click, she sinks down in to the nearest chair, puts her head in her hands and thinks, _Oh, fuck_. She tries to find guilt or regret, but it just isn't there. Her body is still humming happily, purring like a cat. All she feels is satisfaction.

She laughingly tells the empty room, "So, that happened."

Yes, it did.

~fin

Cross-posted to [](http://ckr-actorfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**ckr_actorfic**](http://ckr-actorfic.livejournal.com/) and [](http://rpf-canada.livejournal.com/profile)[**rpf_canada**](http://rpf-canada.livejournal.com/)


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